Michael Wolff had quite the book launch on Wednesday. Before his new work, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, even went on sale, it hit No. 1 on Amazon after excerpts splashed across several news sites — and it became the rare top news story on all three cable news networks. At MSNBC, Lawrence O'Donnell gave a theatrical recap, and on CNN, Jake Tapper said thanks to Wolff's quotes from Stephen Bannon and President Trump's unusually personal pushback, "Washington is starting to resemble the final scene from Reservoir Dogs." The excerpts "range from the bizarre to the stunning and some may even have legal ramifications," Tapper said, running through some of the highlights.
CNN's Anderson Cooper called Wolff's book "a bombshell," and said "what's really interesting is the White House line of attack on Steve Bannon." He rolled his eyes at White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders "saying that the president's former campaign CEO and then chief White House political strategist did not have a lot of influence," and wondered at her defense of Trump "having conversations with someone that he believes has lost his mind."
At Fox News, Tucker Carlson had on Bannon biographer Keith Koffler, who said "Bannon is not going to react well" to Trump attacking him. "The problem for Trump is this," Koffler said. "He has basically declared war on Steve Bannon. Steve Bannon likes wars, and I think he's going to go for it. ... If Bannon damages him even a little bit, Trump cannot afford that."
On Laura Ingraham's Fox News show, Ann Coulter and Rich Lowry also puzzled out why Bannon and Trump would tear each other apart like this, wondering how it serves their shared interests. Watch below. Peter Weber